Rein in the blackmailer

Unfortunately, Musharraf’s emphasis on providing political, diplomatic and moral support for Kashmiri freedom struggle is only an encouragement to continued violence within the state. And this support is for 6 per cent of the people of Kashmir who want to join Pakistan! If he is sincere about what the people of Kashmir want, then he should closely look at the fact that 86 per cent of the people in the state want an end to militancy and infiltration. On the other hand, India had said after Musharraf’s January speech that the real test would come in summer. Unfortunately, the incidence of terrorist violence in J&K during the winter months was noticeably higher than during similar winters in recent years. Besides, cross-border terrorism has escalated. Musharraf’s new promises would take time to show results on the ground. And these are crucial months since they are also the run up to the elections in J&K.

Indian non-military options were running out. However, the public debate essentially centred on limited, calibrated use of conventional military force within J&K. But what was even more significant was the sudden raising of the nuclear bogey by Pakistanis faithfully echoed in the media from London and Washington. During his referendum campaign, Musharraf himself talked in terms of using the nuclear weapons. Following his address to the nation on May 23, three tests of ballistic missiles were carried out as a visible symbol of the strategic capabilities to back his claims. As if this was not enough, Pakistan’s new ambassador to the UN, who is otherwise a very polished diplomat, talked quite aggressively at length on how and when nuclear weapons would be used while his president talked of taking the war inside Indian territory.

The tragedy is that the nuclear bluff and blackmail appear to have worked on the sole super power and it ordered its citizens out of India! This has far reaching consequences even if some non-proliferation-wallas see some advantage in it. Now Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is to visit the subcontinent presumably to tell us of those dangers. To back it up, his Defence Intelligence Agency has released a report that 12 million people would be killed in a nuclear war. The US Secretary of Defence will follow to continue applying “pressure” to de-escalate. But no one seems to have sat down to answer some obvious questions: who is threatening nuclear weapons and their use? And secondly, who is likely to initiate it? And what does the nuclear hype really mean?

India has a declared no-first-use policy. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has committed the country to that policy at the UN General Assembly in 1998. This policy has been frequently reiterated in recent weeks. Deterrence is expected to work under these circumstances by the promise of assured retaliation to a nuclear attack on India and its forces which would lead to unacceptable levels of punishment to the nuclear aggressor. Even Colin Powell has indicated that he had told the Pakistanis how foolish nuclear option would be, given India’s no-first-use policy.

The risk of use of nuclear weapons, if any, therefore, can arise only under one set of circumstances: Islamabad decides to use it on India. It has been threatening to do so almost every other day. It did hold out a nuclear threat in the early stages of the Kargil War in 1999 in the hope that the international community would order a ceasefire shifting the line eastward. The US also concluded that Pakistan was planning to arm its nuclear missiles while Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was enroute to Washington on July 3, 1999, to confirm Pakistan’s withdrawal back across the Line of Control. The current promotion of nuclear threat, therefore, can only be a diplomatic blackmail by Pakistan to persuade Washington to tilt in its favour.

Washington must be careful in not sliding back to its Cold War practice of balancing India and Pakistan in what came to be known as a hyphenated relationship. This would detract it completely from its immediate goal of fighting a war against terrorism especially since almost all the top leadership of Al-Qaeda and Taliban have dispersed inside Pakistan, and complicate its long-term foreign policy goals. India has a stake in the success of the US war against terrorism. It is ironical and symptomatic of the times we live in that the world’s sole super power has been held to ransom by a persistently failing state, home to jehadi terror across the globe, stalling on one pretext or the other the dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure established by its army and army-controlled ISI.

Under the circumstances, the US would find it practically impossible to balance counter-terrorism in Pakistan with search for a permanent “solution” to the Kashmir issue. At the minimum, a ‘dialogue’ between Pakistan and India is sought. But what would be the agenda for such a dialogue even if India gives in to arm-twisting? Status of Jammu and Kashmir which acceded to India in 1947? Or, the programme for rolling back and eliminating cross-border terrorism? The central issue now is cross-border terrorism and not Kashmir; and the US must remain focused on it.